You Would be Pretty

A collaboration of two memories dealing with black beauty ideals. The title derives from a statement heard often from those who believe that black woman and girls should always subscribe to Eurocentric beauty standards and chemically straighten their hair. The imagery uses a different childhood memory as a rebuttal to the memory referenced in the title. The collage uses components normally used to depict beauty to represent something ugly and painful.

The left side of the collage is made up of a floral print depicting dying magnolias to represent the damage done to hair from chemical relaxers. Beaded embroidery and buttons depict open sores and bleeding on the scalp that the artist personally experienced for years due to having their hair chemically straighten only once. The right side of the hair part is a contrast to the damage; depicting healthy magnolias and full thick hair. The two hair parts come together as a response to those who would say “you would be pretty if you straightened your hair” not seeing the beauty in natural black hair when it is healthy and insisting their is only beauty in a process that created over a decade of physical damage to the scalp, skin, and hair of the artist.

This piece is made from custom printed fabric whose designs where painted in ink wash and edited in Photoshop. Beaded embroidery and antique buttons were stitched to represent gore.